


Blood and Glass (Lay Down Your Burdens)

by PasdeChameau



Category: The Terror (TV 2018), The Terror - Dan Simmons
Genre: Brief period-typical homophobia(ish), Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Established Relationship, Fluff and Angst, Gratuitous Christian imagery, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-01-02
Updated: 2019-01-02
Packaged: 2019-10-02 09:02:38
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 749
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17261384
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/PasdeChameau/pseuds/PasdeChameau
Summary: Things are shed and found on the long march. Written for the kinkmeme prompt: Fitzier, trying to live up to expectations.





	Blood and Glass (Lay Down Your Burdens)

James is shaving. Francis knows this without looking, but can't as easily block his ears to the sound of it, try as he does to fix his attention on the maps spread out upon the table before him. It’s absurd, given the clamoring of the wind at the tent flap, but intimacy of the kind he and James share tunes the senses in strange and subtle ways. And so it is the soft sweep of James’s razor against his skin, rather than the din outside, that scrapes Francis’s nerves raw now. The sound is a brittle and lonely one, like the rasp of dead leaves set shivering in the wind. At last, Francis can bear it no longer. “Leave that off, won’t you?”

“I’ve nearly finished.” James’s voice drifts vaguely from the other side of the tent.

Exasperation mounting, Francis turns in his chair. James’s back is to him as he shaves before a pinched, crooked mirror. “You might leave off entirely, you know,” Francis says.

James regards him blandly in the glass. “You haven’t,” he points out.

“I’m not one hand-slip away from bleeding out.”

James’s eyebrows float a little higher at that, but he says nothing, returning to his task. Francis is seized by a sudden desire to smash the glass to pieces. It is nothing but another mask for James to hide himself within. It is also dead weight, and would do better service cracked apart amongst the broken rocks.

“Well?” Francis says at last. He can’t fathom why he’s goading James like this. He can’t stop.

James sighs—a lone concession to Francis’s anger, because his tone, when he speaks, is utterly untroubled. “You might show a bit more grace, when the habit in question so manifestly benefits you. The sensation of whiskers on skin, I’m told, isn’t overly agreeable.”

Francis flushes, aware his prudishness is every bit as incongruous as James’s pride, and all the more irritated for his inability to cut it loose. He clenches his jaw against the obvious retort. Obvious, but ungenerous, Francis knows now, since James could count the male lovers he had taken on one hand. Worn ragged as Francis is this evening—Reid had died only hours before—the cruelty of such a comment might not be enough to dissuade him if only it were also truthful, and that sickens him most of all.

Weary, Francis drags a hand across his brow. “James,” he begins, but nothing follows, and the sentence flickers in the space between them, suspended between penitence and punishment. They might stay like this forever, Francis thinks, and the notion isn’t without its comfort.

But then James hisses, and a flash of red splits the tent’s air. James has indeed nicked himself—or rather, scraped open a sore upon his jaw—and all of Francis’s surliness falls away at the sight. Carefully, as though afraid of shaking blood from James’s veins with every footstep, he makes his way to his companion’s side.

James dabs at the cut with a grimy sleeve, and Francis rests his palm upon his back, thumb upon the knob that crowns James’s spine. “Tell me,” he says, voice rough, “Tell me you do not do this for me.”

James’s eyes meet his in the glass, then slide away. “We’ve little enough cheer—thought you might appreciate one pleasant sight.”

“Only you’d be vain enough to fancy your looks an answer to the ice.” But there is a tearing and a roaring inside Francis now, and he speaks through it only with supreme effort.

James’s mouth twitches—aiming for a grin, perhaps, but it doesn’t quite catch. And then Francis is on his knees before him, pressing his lips to James’s bowed head. “James, you needn’t think to please me. You—you can’t fail to, scabs and whiskers and all. I only want you near me.”

There is a long silence, broken only by the wind drumming on the canvas. The walls of the tent heave with each gust; it is like being inside a great, beating heart. Finally, James nods, once, against Francis’s kiss.

Francis draws back, and his mouth is damp with the blood that laces James’s brow. He licks it clean from habit, the way he would a split lip.

James’s smile is full now, though wry. “Do this,” he says, as though from far away, “in remembrance of me.”

But no: despite it all, despite what he himself has said, this is not how Francis will remember him.

**Author's Note:**

> In my head this is set sometime in Episode 7, making the reference to vanity a subtle call-forward rather than me shamelessly cribbing from canon dialogue. Do we know when in the show James Reid died? His was the first minor character's name to occur to me, but I was too lazy to actually double-check whether what I've written contradicts the show's timeline.
> 
> The subtitle is probably best construed as a reference to Matthew 11:28, but who am I kidding? It was actually inspired by the Season 2 finale of Battlestar Galactica.


End file.
